Employee Engagement: Nobody Wants an F

“HR should be leading the charge to raise the firm’s employee engagement maturity level,” says Bruce Temkin, customer experience transformist and managing partner at the Temkin Group. “Employee engagement is one of the most strategic opportunities for HR professionals.” Meanwhile, survey participants point to three common obstacles that prevent them from turning this situation around: the lack of a clear employee engagement strategy, inconsistent buy-in from middle managers, and limited funding along with inconsistent buy-in across the leadership team.

I think the article points to some serious challenges in engagement. I personally, don’t care for the term “buy-in” for engagement as I am not sure that fits with what it means to be engaged. I wonder if the “buy-in” challenge for managers stems from being overloaded with so many things and perceiving employee engagement as something extra they need to do. I don’t want to be sold on engagement or sell it. Having said that I realize what a challenge it is to invite, converse, question, and co-create engagement. Yet this approach costs very little and alleviates the limited funding obstacle.

My focus is on small, simple, strategic, structural, and sustainable actions that can move the dial on engagement. If you want to seize the strategic opportunity of employee engagement I encourage you to focus on the big impact while using small actions.

In the second half of 2015 I am creating 11 simple rules that all employees can follow to increase their own engagement and supplementing the simple rules with how managers and leaders can foster that in the people they lead and manage.

This is based on my pyramid of employee engagement and enhances: results, performance, progress, relationships, recognition, moments, strengths, meaning, well-being, and energy.

David Zinger uses the pyramid of employee engagement as a speaker and consultant to show an inexpensive and behavioral pathway to improving employee engagement for the benefit of all.